About the "Easter Egg":
I beleive there is a program in the archives (ah! Too lazy to find it!) that gives instructions for this. In fact, on AMS 1.xx, if you press F5, Diamond, Apps, it does the same thing. Or, open tex (http://tex.fr.st), and press 2nd-T.

It is for tests on the software and hardware so it can be dertermined whether it is functioning properly. Getting to the test by alpha s has been established but don't forget about remote mode alpha r at this screen. Thanks Z for tetris.

On a totally unrelated note, does anyone else want Nick D. to be news editor again? Without him, days go by without posts (no offense eric) and the new releases are hardly ever updated.


Omicron and the Borg Collective's mind-blowingly large ammount of U.S. currency.

This little thing "Easter Egg" was discovered quite a while ago. I have even heard rumors that you can hook up a TI-83 to the Ti-89 and get the TI-89 to do the math for the TI-83. I have no TI-83 or intention of destroying my programs ,which entering the test screen will reset your memory.

I'm starting to learn the ASM language for TI-83 Plus because BASIC just doesn't support enought functions. My first game is going to be about a Japanese show called "Dragonball Z." I have all of the information and ideas in my head, if only I could program better. I get stumped after declaring the description and the program image. If some ASM programmer could please help explain, I will be sure to include your name in the credits on the highest position. Thanks.

Can anyone confirm that those radio links really work? I am very interested in buying a couple, but I don't want to waste $90.

Thanks

Its not an "Easter Egg", TI purposely put it there for testing the calcs hardware and stuff. This has been know for a long, very long time.

Yep.
In case anyone doesn't know, after you go to that screen, press the alpha key and then the letter s (the #3 key) to go to a screen with options of which hardware test to perform.

Cavan

Thanx, I didn't know that...
Could someone give me an explanation of what each test does and how they can be of any use at all?, if it's not too hard for you guys... thanx

~Trooper_Max~

I don't think any of the tests are really useful for much (although the LCD one is kind of neat). However, some of the tests will freeze your calculator and/or erase your RAM, so be careful! (in particular, the oscillator test freezes on HW1 calcs)

Wow, that's cool. How did you figure it out?

diamond "y", diamond "z", and 2nd ans() work too

if you press
[f5] + [<>] + [clear] + [alpha] + [2]
it will put the calc in recieve mode.

What is this receive mode supposed to receive?

actually, you push alpha+Y. The alpha+'s' thing is for the TI-85 (in the TI-85 Mode screen, hit alpha+s to do tests).

yeay!! radio links! congrats on finally coming out with them!

uhm, whats the diff between transmiter and receiver.. (yes sounds stupid, but i just want to clarify). Say I and a friend want to get this so we can use them in class, what would we need to get? 2 transmitters or what?

I'm guessing that

transmitter send the data
receiver receives the data

So you'd each need one transmitter and one receiver to send stuff to each other (so two of each total).

Yes, that is correct. 2 receiver and 2 transmitters are needed to link 2 calculators full-duplex.

I'm very excited too, but I'm skeptic on how hard they are to install. Fussion 2 seems like a shady group of people to me also.

Hello,

I will try to answer all questions here on this board or via email at cbunting@fission2.com.

Each calculator requires 1 transmitter and 1 receiver to function as a full-duplex radio link. Of course I guess you could switch them back and forth, but wouldn't that defeat the purpose?

Why do they cost so much? The IC itself costs over $10 a piece, and the labor and cost of making the PCB, not to mention the rest of the components. These are very precisely engineered boards.

Let me tell you a little bit about us. We are FusionWEB Design Co., consisting of 9 employees (well 10 including myself) that work off-site or onsite on occasion. We have a 3 person technical support staff. FusionWEB was established in early 1997. We have been active in the TI community for the past few years, releasing several projects.

Regarding the gentleman’s comment claiming "we are a shady group of people" I'm not sure how you are basing this comment. If you have a reason, please feel free to tell me. I would like to know how I could improve my company.

Thank You,
Chris Bunting
FusionWEB
CEO
http://www.fission2.com

I apologize I forgot to answer another question that was asked:

How hard is it to install?

We offer 2 ways on the instruction booklet to install them. You may either embed the board in your calculator (its about the size of a quarter) and connect the 3 wires to your link port or use a 2.5mm stereo plug and keep the board external. Either way, its just 3 wires to connect. We include fully detailed and pictorial instructions.

It is way more wires than just three and the directions suck. The internal directions are exactly the same as the external. Some pictorial instructions, just some stupid diagram of the units and a pic of the transmitter. Where are the pictures of the freakin' thing all put together so I can see what the heck it supposed to look like? One instruction says connect a power source to V+ on both boards. What? A power source consists of + and -, which one goes where? You make it sound so easy, Fission Labs, with your, "just three wires to connect" crap, when in reality it is like 9 wires that go all over the boards. Not to mention that it is impossible to install internally especially when the directions say, "connect the red wire...", what red wire? There is no red wire to connect to in the link port. Plus the boards are like a half inch thick and will never fit in the case (at least not in my 89). And what is up with blacking out all that stuff in the manual? For example your phone number. My friend and I managed to decipher it and it is always busy, I wonder why? The instructions say that if you want to install a light look at manual 3, where might that be? The manual isn't even stapled together!!! Who even knows where page 3 is!!! I was hoping to get this stuff installed in like an hour and a half. My friend and I worked for 5 hours trying to decipher this crap you call instructions. I hope you fix these problems because I don't want people going through what I am still going through. Don't have to be a soldering expert, huh? Well I do this stuff all the time and I expected it to be a lot more simple than it is. That's just it, it would be simple if I had good directions!!!

Not that I am a complete skeptic about this whole thing, but why won't the makers explain the missing parts that "cava" claimed. I read the whole posting section on this product before it came out. People were talking about chatting through computers and all sorts of other dreams that weren't realistic (due to limits of TIs). Fusion had the public pretty hyped up about this. D-Day came and people began ordering this wonder product. For "cava", this led to an expensive and time consuming chore to put this thing together. Not all the people who want this product have hardware skills, therefore making it difficult to install, especially if directions and parts are missing as "cava" claims. Computer products usually come almost completely assembled, just installation needed, why should this be any different.
Some questions for Fission:
Why are there no pictures of the finished product working available? Why are parts and directions missing? Why is it such a pain to install?
I am not trying to "burn" Fission, I would just like some answers so I could decide if this product is worth my money.
PS Sorry for the long message.

wait, so, what your saying is, to chat with someone via radio link, you have to sit there and switch the receive and transmit every 2 seconds?

No, that is incorrect. I am saying that if a user would only have 1 receiver and 1 transmitter it wouldn't be practicle to switch them from calculator to calculator.

Our system uses a transmitter and receiver on BOTH ends, there is no switching, its a once and done hookup.

why are you selling them seperately? it only causes confusion (unless it's likely that one will fail & the other won't)

in fact, you should probably package them together as one device. (i assume you aren't)

to give people an idea of how impractical it would be to "switch them back and forth", for each BIT transferred, you would have to switch 4 times. (with normal link protocol)

so to send "hello", that's switching 160 times. (5*8*4) you NEED one of each for each calc.

Why aren't we selling them together?

Simple, not everyone has the amount of money for a complete set off the bat. I've had several orders for just 1 piece. When they get more money, they will buy the other pieces needed to make a system. It's an affordable way for those who don't want to buy it all at once.

As for switching back and forth, yes, I am aware of that, that is why you do NOT have to do it with the RadioLinc. Both the transmitter and receiver are connected all the time. They are only keyed when needed.

to the people that are only buying half of this:

what the heck are you thinking?? here, watch this: take the money you're going to spend on half of a radiolinc, put it in a drawer until you've got enough to buy the whole thing. magic!! wow!!

really, if you buy half now, what do you have? the joy of having a useless piece of hardware around your house for a few months? the ability to show off a useless piece of hardware to your friends?? you can't use half!

then consider this: what if, by the time you have enough money to buy the rest, you no longer have any interest in using a radiolinc? if you followed my magical instructions above, you could go out and buy a nice new shiny game or a hard drive or something.

"ah, but that will never happen," you say? you're right. calculators are always the most important and interesting thing in life. they never get stolen either. what was i thinking? never mind.

in the meantime, you have half of a radiolinc 2.0, and they come out with new v3.0. sorry, they're not compatible, but thank you for playing.

By "Half of a link" I assume he means one transmitter and one receiver, for cheap one-way data communication (which is actually useful, unlike owning a single transmitter and talking to nobody!). This wouldn't work if the tx/rx were on the same board. I've seen similar boards sold for $70 commercially, this really is a good deal.

ti's calculators use a bidirectional communication protocol.

even if you're only sending information, the other end has to send back an acknowledge. (twice per bit & another message at the end of the whole thing)

you could do one-way communication with half a link on each side (afaik, there's not much info on how the radiolincs work), but you would need to write your own asm program on each end & use a different protocol.

hmmm yeah, why is it your URL is www.fission2.com and yet your companies name is fusion2? there IS a fusion2.com, but they are not related with your company. When I asked you why, you answered "Because it is". I really want one of these things, I really do, but how hard are they to install? what do they look like? Do they work as you say they do? How stable are the connections? Why are they so expensive?

Our company name is FusionWEB Design Co., Inc.

Our domain name is fission2.com, we choose that as our domain name, I used to own a software company called Fission2 Software Co., therefore I kept the same domain name to this day.

I don't beleive I gave you a "because it is" answer. My answer was very clear and easy to understand.

I have already answered how they are installed. Yes, they work, or we wouldn't be selling them. I haven't had a dropped connection, so I'de say they are stable. A lot of engineering and design time went into making these. The IC we use costs $10 alone, the cost of the PCB, labor, componants, it all adds up. We are trying to make these as cheap as possible.

Thanks to all that ordered in the past few days, we will be shipping them out asap!

Mr, you sold me! First 60 i get im getting a pair of your links, I do wish they were cheaper though.

Hey all you cynics, give the man a break!

Great, I'm sure you will be happy with them!

I don't think that it's reasonable to spend $50 (per calc) for an alternate way of transferring files. The link cable seems to work well enough, and is a lot cheaper. Given, it would be nice to go wireless, but there is NO WAY that I can get ANYONE else at my school to spend FIFTY DOLLERS on this device. Therefore, the RadioLink isn't even practical. If I buy one, I still can't use it because no one else will have one. This is another reason no one else at my school will ever buy one. They won't be able to use it. There just aren't enough programs that utilize the link to justify it anyway. All you need to transfer anything from one calc to another is a ONE standard $7 (?) link cable. The only practical use for a RadioLink would be to show off and chat (what's the point of chatting if the person's right next to you?). Anyway, I'm sure the RadioLink is a fine piece of hardware (at $90 a set, it better be), but I think that the $7 choice is more reasonable.

PS: I just know that someone will flame me for this, but please remember that I am only expressing my opinion. It's a fact that it's expensive, and the vast majority of TI owners will never get one (only a few people at my whole school even know about TICalc, yet we all have TIs). The only way they will ever get one is if ppl that know about it can sell them one. I know the ppl at my school will NEVER buy it for $50 (and they will need both).

My friend and I heard about this and immediately split the cost of the V2 kit and started working on secret antenna installations in our classrooms at school. Currently we have a 20 ft copper dipole in the ceiling of my Chemistry class that no one has any idea about. We can't wait to get these things so that we can "chat" during a test, if you know what I mean. And stop complaining about the price. $45 is not that bad.

Ok, I'm not going to flame you. But calculators cost 90 bucks anyway, what's another 50 bucks or so? And the radiolink is not just for chatting with the person next to you, these things go 600 feet! (supposedly) I'm probably going to buy a whole system myself, and then let someone borrow one transmitter/receiver so i can communicate with them. The radiolinc and standard cable link cannot be compared. And about the programs available for the radiolink, it works like this: hardware is designed, and software follows.

I agree, usually the hardware has to be developed first, because then software programmers can figure out all the specifics.

I'm trying to start the trend in my school to have the radiolincs. Me and two other friends already ordered the kits. I hope they will catch on and there will be a chatroom at school for the TIs.

I just can't wait for the dang things to come in the mail!!!